gone
by xenovia
Summary: The rooftop awaits him. — Shuuya.


The nightmares begin first.

They plague him in the dead of the night, tendrils reaching down to the abyssal pit where his mind rests when he loses consciousness. They torment him and mock him, dancing around him uncontrollably with high-pitched laughter and jetful tones. They haunt him of his past, his present, his imminent future. They slither and slide and tell him that he'll never be equal to those he loves, that they'll eventually abandon him one day, and for some reason, he succumbs to it. He begins to believe them night after night of encountering them, and he doesn't even hesitate when they suggest he kills himself.

It doesn't work out in the end, though, because his neighbor finds him attempting to tie a noose around his neck and is utterly horrified.

* * *

He has odd dreams when the creatures don't taunt him in his slumber. He imagines an amiable but shy black-haired boy, full of smiles and chuckles and warmth, standing happily alongside a girl with dark coal-colored eyes and long, pretty green hair that swings out from underneath the lilac hood pulled over her head. They always seem to be happy, and they always seem to talk to him - yet he doesn't know them. He doesn't know their names, not yet, but he's infatuated with them, these figments of his wild imagination - they're his friends even if they only appear in hazy visions embedded deep in his mind, and they make him want to neglect and ignore the cruel creature's taunting and threats. He almost does, but it's then that he realizes that he'll never be good enough for the two of them - even though they are but mere dreams.

He refuses to sleep after a while. He doesn't want to see their grinning faces, those smiles beamed at him when he was nothing but an unwanted nuisance. When he eventually does pass out from exhaustion after parading a week without sleep, he doesn't see them again.

He's only meet with darkness and the hollow whispers of the monsters from the shadows in the cave he called his mind.

It's almost enough to make him scream, and he finds himself waking up nearly every night when the moon is high up, covered in sweat and his voice screeching on its own.

His mother does nothing, and his neighbors are forced to turn their backs away. They soundproof their walls.

* * *

Second arrives the hallucinations. His eyes catch demonic figures garbed all in black glaring at him from the corner, accentuated with bright and harsh yellow. Glowering eyes like a cat, he'd been able to catch once, but the little mirage disappears the second he sets both aware eyes on it. It's terrifying and soothing all at once, in a way - maybe he's finally diving off the deep end and he'll be allowed to leave his mother be in the tranquil life she desired so much. He'd finally be able to rid the world of his rotten existence if he decayed enough.

There's something in the back of his mind that pleads him not to, though. He ignores it either way and travels down a darker path until he hits middle school. The rooftop awaits him.

* * *

He throws himself off.

* * *

It's amazing, the way the wind feels against his tear-stained face. He can see the blurred horizon of the city he despised so much, and though he abhorred it so, it looked almost beautiful in that midday moment. He felt free at last, free from the monsters ripping at his mind and the black-and-yellow man and the two smiling kids he'd still yet to meet. He doesn't take a single breath and doesn't feel an ounce of regret until the millisecond before his body slams into the cement in front of the school's entrance.

He imagines a girl in that last moment. A pretty yet plain girl with average-length brown hair and a billowing, old red muffler, rippling in the wind with her school uniform as she teetered over the edge. A smile pressed on her face despite her decision to cast her imminent doom, and a sparkle in her eyes that was far too warm for her to be even considering committing suicide, he thinks. She seems awfully familiar, but he doesn't pin his finger on it because it's too late.

It's far, far too late.

He can only slip out a half-hearted apology before his ragged body snaps as it collides harshly with the ground.


End file.
